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The Skull Merchant is a worse Doctor
From the very first moment on survivors are breaking my drones, there's pretty much no downside to it. Being able to track them doesn't mean a thing if the killer has no power that can help with chases, survivors continue to abuse busted perks and extremely questionable map design to waste as much of your time as humanly possible.
Survivors who carry claw traps should have far more handicaps than that, being oblivious as well as having reduced repair speed would be a good start. Her purple aura reading addon needs to be basekit, too. Otherwise you might as well play Doctor instead who can use his power far easier and more effectively to keep track of survivors. And his power at least negatively affects skillchecks.
The new killer in her current state has literally NO reason to exist, she's downright pitiful. Her exposed effect takes TOO long to stack so it might as well not exist in the first place. There better be some serious hotfixes/buffs within the first week, it's beyond me how this disgustingly weak excuse for a killer could ever make it onto live servers.
Comments
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Hey, don't do Doc dirty. ;)
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Playing this killer only opens you up to relentless ridicule. They keep looping this killer throughout the game while the rest of the team is genrushing. NOED is the only saving grace and the reason why I even was able to secure a second kill. I only had 3-4 hooks throughout that match (including the endgame one).
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I like your name choice. Here is mine.
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It's pretty harsh to compare Skull Merchant to Doctor. One is a killer with a useful tracking ability, side power and anti-loop and the other is Skull Merchant.
She has some addons that make her do something but her base power does pretty much nothing at all.
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Incredible how survivors get to bully the first E-tier killer of the game. Only a single hook while they rushed 5 gens. This is downright unplayable. Where's the hotfix for this dumpsterfire?
Who the hell builds drones without giving them the ability to shoot at targets or blow themselves up? How are they of any actual help to the Skull Merchant?
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Well, if you are getting genrushed and things are going south you could always try defend a good 3 gen setup and use Eruption to get an upper hand at the endga... oh, wait!!!
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The only thing this killer excels at is being made a fool of. I still don't get why she can't set up drones close to hooks, it'd be her only saving grace but even that is being denied. She's absolutely atrocious to play as. Easily on par with release Trickster, no kidding.
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I'm not trying to pick on you or be mean, because it's not just you who does it, but I feel like every post you make trying to prove something by constantly posting your end game screens. I get that you don't have a PC that can handle screen recording well, but end game screens show very little of the story and how you are actually playing the match and they really don't prove anything at all without actually being able to see the whole match itself.
I'm not saying she doesn't have issues, or she doesn't need QOL adjustments or buffs. But what I'd really like to see is the content of the match and how your actually playing because the constant factor in all of these games is yourself.
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There's plenty of gameplay out there from others, though, who struggle as much as I do. The killer is simply not fun to play as.
Her power feels buggy as hell at times considering how you can't deploy her drones in certain areas despite having no hooked survivor around. It feels completely arbitrary and there are no actual rules to look up on how her power really functions. They expect players to simply put up with this nonsense.
I'd also like to raise awareness about the godawful infinite loop on the Skull Merchant map, there's some footage of it from no0b3's latest video. Take a good look at the 8 minute mark.
Why is every single new map update like this?
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They are two different killers.
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Please. Don't just buff this killer. Don't go knight's way on it. The killer is horrible to play as and against. If you buff her, there will be some people that pick her up solely for the reason that she would become strong.
Let's burry her instead. She - same as knight is horrible to play as/against. Let's not make her popular killer just to frustrate your survivor player base even more. Knight was already enough. Please let's go more in a direction of Wesker instead (and as a survivor I would much rather vs much stronger Wesker then boring knight or skull merchant - because fun is more then just wins/losses).
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"Eruption will carry m- ACK!"
Killer main that never ran Eruption here, I laugh at you.
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If I took screenshots, I could simply post the several games I got a 4K as Skull Merchant.
I don't find her to be nearly as bad as people are saying. You can improve her chase with spirit fury + enduring and she has an exhaustion addon that is easy to apply to stop dead hard. She also has an addon to increase her pallet break speed for spirit fury + enduring combo.
Her drones are effective for watching an area. You can even use her drones to scout for survivors going for a pallet/flashlight save after downing a survivor.
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Three gens will be done by the moment she finally hooks someone. Her early game is absolutely atrocious, even gathering stacks for Spirit Fury will still require some of your precious time. Also she doesn't get the bonus until the drone is fully deployed which makes her purple addon kind of lackluster. I usually end up kicking a gen or pallet before the drone has even has fully set up the radius. I do see the value of her green screw addon but it's quite the hassle to constantly recall drones to have a spare one ready for this type of thing.
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- activate a drone thats being hacked to instantly expose the hacker, you cant see the aura but the little icon to activate it will still show up. youre welcome
- dont stray too far from your web. if someone gets exposed, you cant capitalize on it if youre across the map
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Micro managing your drones is a big part to her power. I'm constantly checking my drones, reactivating one that need to be, and calling back drones to have one to place in a chase. She might just not be your type of killer and that's fine. The biggest thing that took time to learn was that drones are placed where you hit M2 and not where you are at the end of the animation. Getting used to that helped make placing effective drones.
I've been running sloppy on her and sometimes in the early game I'll hit and run some survivors, try to get some pallets out, and try to build an area to defend. If I can get an early down, that's great. But she definitely shines better defending a smaller area like Trapper and Hag.
I still think she's a relatively weak killer as she trades lethality for information and while information can be very useful she can certainly struggle on maps with many strong tiles. She's also kind of addon dependent, because without addons her power does very little in chase.
Though I did have a game where I caught a survivor in the corner of the map, had the drone cover the entire tile, and just waited for the expose to build up and got an early down that way.
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1) How exactly can you tell if a drone is being hacked? Which icon would that be? If I try to select any of my drones all it does is recall them.
2) So you want me to set up a 3-4 gen from the very start? Her drones don't even hinder survivors, they get defused far too quickly. Knight is definitely better at defending generators.
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it doesnt have an icon, but the aura of the drone dissapears. during that, theres a small window of about 2 seconds where you can reactivate it before its hacked. its a bit hard to pull off but if you pay attention to the drones, its fine
i mean, yeah. it works, her power sucks in chase and only really works as a territorial thing, especially with the addon that buffs her while in the drones radius
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Really? First game I played as her I was able to get 4 moris
Her tracking power is actually pretty good for the exit gates
Pair that with remember me and the survivors will have a hard time
By having rancor, game Afoot, remember me, and terminus, it's almost like you're tombstone Myers
However the main issue can be that she has no mobility, so going gate to gate when a survivor is detected can be a drag
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I've played several matches against Skull Merchant, and I'm finding her very annoying. Like Hag levels of annoying. She defends gens with her drones. You can hack drones, but you get insta-exposed if you mess it up. Even if you successfully hack it, she can easily redeploy it in the same spot.
So yeah, to me, the Skull Merchant is like another Hag, with more effects to her power.
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I haven't seen any survivors who screw up skillchecks yet, only absolute beginners do that. Also walking up just to redeploy your drone is the same as if you're playing Trapper just to re-set a trap which will get immediately disarmed again. It's a lose-lose situation while possibly up to 3 more people are doing the same thing, you can't keep up.
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Doesn't help that one aspects of her kit, Claw Traps, are virtually useless.
Claw traps as they are now are basically a non-factor; the survivors hacking the drones don't care if you know where they are and will just keep rushing to hack the drones because there is no consequence to it and actively tracking them with radar slows the SM down for some reason.
Drones are the Merchants only method of applying pressure and right now they are way too easily neutralized by survivors. Hacking drones needs to be a much harder thing given a survivor can pull off a hack in a few seconds right now and the hack is almost impossible to fail.
BHVR needs to make it so that either a survivor with an active claw trap attached can't hack a drone or if they try to they are instantly exposed and/or incapacitated.
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This isn't your typical DBD skillcheck, as I'm sure you know. Pressing random directional buttons as generated by this drone hacking thing isn't difficult, but it's awkward with a joystick, and I mess it up more often than not. I haven't tried using the d-pad, but I doubt it would work.
Another thing I learned is that the Skull Merchant is absolutely CRACKED on indoor maps with multiple floors. She places a drone downstairs in Midwich; if you happen to go into her zone on the top floor, you still get exposed and can't reach her drone to hack it from there.
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What a great argument you made there! Everybody knows Eruption was an "I win" button and the moment you equip it you won every match you did without having any type of skill, of course.
You are definitely better than us peasants that don't care about the survivor morals book and used the best perks we have to win. I hope you received an award for your accomplishments! You are a national hero!!!!
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Even in that situation, you still need to be in the zone for 10 seconds to get exposed. What would surprise me if someone ever get the exposed status when it is so obviously obvious you are on Lock On and need to get out of there "fast".
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Here's a list of possible buffs/changes which should raise her status from E to C tier at least:
1) Drones should expose survivors twice as fast.
2) Remove the 10 second delay/cooldown for setting up/recalling drones.
3) Lower the base delay for booting up your drones. They should be active almost right away.
4) Drones should have their radius buffed by 25%. Alternatively give her one more drone (4->5).
5) Remove any slowdowns from using her radar or deploying drones. Keep her at 115% ms at all times.
6) Make her purple aura reading addon basekit. Killer instinct alone isn't good enough for a supposed surveillance maniac.
7) Change the color of her active drones into blue or something else. The current red lighting from the drones makes it harder to keep track of survivors, too many indicators in this game share the same colortone. It makes no sense for the Skull Merchant to be negatively affected by her own tech.
8) Turn her movespeed addon into basekit. Being a 115% movespeed killer with no gapcloser or interruption is unacceptable.
9) Lower the repairspeed of any survivor who is carrying a Claw Trap. Her tech should be able to do that.
10) Give the Skull Merchant a notification if a survivor starts hacking a drone.
11) Any survivor who's wearing a Claw Trap should gather exposure twice as fast. Make it stack with the buff from #1.
Post edited by Canas on2 -
I just had a 45 minute game which was anything but fun. It took me three gens to finally secure my first hook and despite my best efforts they still finished all gens, her drones were of no help at all.
Literally the only way to get kills on this killer is to camp with NOED during endgame. This whole Walmart tier Knight gameplay of trying to stall long enough until the Entity flat out kills everyone is awful and doesn't even work on her. Knight at least can injure survivors (just for them to immediately heal up anyway), Skull Merchant meanwhile can't do a single thing.
Getting more than a single kill on this killer is a herculean task. The Skull Merchant is rightfully at the very bottom of the tierlist.
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I'm pretty sure the d-pad does work.
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I don't really care for any survivor rulebook. I'll tunnel and camp if I feel the need to. Eruption is and has been a huge crutch for bad killers that can't apply proper pressure. Now that the crutch is gone, all the bad killers are coming out of the woodwork complaining that they can't walk anymore.
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The winner of the DbD Community Cup, who at 2:30 of a 20 minutes match decide his only option is to maintain a strong 3 gen and is using Eruption would laugh at you, "killer main":
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DBD Community Cup lmao. Babby's first tourney.
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Oh, I'm sure you could do way better, King... 🤣
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I'm not the one crying that I lost my crutch perk.
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Again, what a great argument! You would be a great politician, my friend 🤣
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D-pad does work. Much easier to use than the joystick
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Lmao you're joking right? I think this just reflects your own skill bro
I don't find it difficult at all to do 3 gen, in fact I'm still waiting for an experienced survivor team that can break the 3 gen, but it seems it is not possible no matter what they do
Your issue is probably that you're taking the time to hook when u could just leave them on the ground, you don't have hard regression perks, or simply aren't placing the drones right
They disabled the drone? Cool now you can walk to that gen and put one right back up, it's practically basekit surveillance for the killer
I suppose though I have to keep doing 3 gen SM before people finally get that she needs a nerf
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So buff her 3 gen?
You can't possibly be serious, right?
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She needs drastic buffs all across the board, she's literally at the very bottom of the tierlist. Since BHVR never ever reworks killers within the first 3 years of their release they'll do the only thing that can raise her killrate somehow and that is to buff her power. If her power happens to enable 3genning survivors then so be it. She NEEDS help, and FAST.
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Do these match results look like a joke to you? If anything they prove two important things:
1) The Skull Merchant is downright unplayable.
2) Matchmaking is nonexistent and never adapts despite losing nonstop.
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Where's the hotfix for this dumpsterfire?
well that is one way to describe the killer. hotfix already happened. I don't think any of her buff did anything to be honest. they almost seemed more quality of life stuff that had no impact whatsoever. I still think that my opinion towards PTB holds true.
her lock-on ineffective as zoning tool at loops because survivor will only let themselves get exposed if they're injured which is when exposed has no impact whatsoever. Exposed does not help her get hits in the chase. it is not anti-loop. Trapper and Hag have anti-loop with their traps because trapper disables your movement and hag teleport's. this killer needs some trap drone threat.
They should rework her lock-on to apply -8% hindered for 60 seconds.
This would allow her to zone effectively and give her the ability to get a chasing power if lock-on succeeds. trapping based killer are entirely based off anti-loop zoning and yet she is so bad at zoning....
Her second issue is that these arm traps are offer no incentives at base-kit for her to pursue survivors. The arm-traps need to be more dangerous such as applying exposed for as long as battery is alive which by default is 45 second of exposed. This can help her shorten chases and give incentive for the killer to chase after survivors with traps so entire gameplay is not 100% 3 gen focused to brim.
these two changes would help her immensely at base-kit.
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You are NOT using the comp argument.... Competitive DBD is a bad joke and suckers like you who look to it are the punchline.
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Isn't competitive/tournament DbD filled with extra-rules anyway? I remember them having handicaps for survivors like limiting perks to one copy for the entire team to prevent stuff like 4 DHs. It's a whole different meta really.
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First of all, I was aware that there is an "official" tournament and "Competitive DbD" with that video that was recommended to me by Youtube. In fact, it recommended me the Otzdarva reaction to it.
Second of all, whatever your opinion about "Competitive DbD" is don't change the point of my argument.
Why would they want to limit survivor's perks and items so they don't get an overwhelming advantage over the killer when the survivor meta and perks are so balanced and killers are so strong? That's crazy!...
And even with that limit, they forced the killer to simply just go for a 3gen and depend on one perk to have a chance to win. Point made.
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Survivors have been either disconnecting or flatout ragequitting my past few games, apparently they heavily dislike playing against a killer who only can defend a 3gen. If only she had any useful abilities to help her during a chase, maybe then she wouldn't be forced to do this insanely boring strategy.
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Wow
I don't think you've played against a proper 3 gen skull merchant if you don't believe it to be an issue, I'm reliably hitting the 1 hour cap just with the build of dying light, COB, Overcharge, and sloppy butcher
It will just be a matter of time however till you see how big of an issue it is as more and more people do it
I can't possibly imagine making the 3 gen even EASIER to do as skull merchant, even though it's laughably easy already
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Agree, I'd recommend you just try to hit the 1 hour cap with a more defense heavy build so as to get the word out that she needs a rework or just be deleted as it's really all she's good for
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Yes, they do because you're playing her like a normal killer which she is not and is weak in that regard
But as a 3 gen skull merchant she's just painful to the point where she needs a nerf or just rework or deleted from the game
Those match results were because you tried to play her like a normal killer
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The changes didn't do anything to raise her viability, she's still extremely weak and in dire need of further buffs.
Her power is too weak, the least BHVR should do is raise the haste bonus from the first claw trapped survivor to 5% to enable her to catch up. Beyond that survivors don't care about being exposed if they're either injured or simply rushing a gen since the drone(s) will do nothing to actively hinder survivors.
Drones should be reworked to actually shoot at survivors if they accumulated exposure, that at least would deter them from disrespecting these pathetic toys. Seriously, who in their right mind would weaponize drones that can't explode or shoot at stuff? Completely missed the theme there. The Skull Merchant is a joke.
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